Bradley: MLB All-Star Game shouldn't decide home field in World Series

Getty ImagesThe All-Star Game shouldn't effect a team's ability to get home-field advantage down the road.

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear. The Major League Baseball All-Star Game, even when it’s an 8-0 drubbing like the National League put on the American League Tuesday night in Kansas City, is far and away the best all-star game in professional sports.

Seriously, it’s not even close.

So, in that regard, commissioner Bud Selig is right. Because that’s part of what Selig said before the game. He said his sport’s All-Star Game is the best.

We’re good with that.

However, it’s hard to agree with the rest of what the commish said, because in answering a question about why, a decade ago, he decided to award home-field advantage in the World Series to the winning league in the All-Star Game, Selig said, “I really like it.”

Really? Like it?

Not only is that hard to believe, the league’s insistence on beating us over the head with it this year makes it less believable. Who was buying those MLB ads, with a scowling Curtis Granderson (Grandy doesn’t scowl) and a sinister-eyed Andrew McCutchen (does anybody in baseball smile more than McCutchen?) telling you not to call their four days off “a break,” and how their All-Star Game had “October implications.”

Please. The All-Star Game only has October implications because Selig screwed up 10 years ago and overreacted to his own mistake. You remember, right? When Selig threw up his arms after 11 innings in his hometown of Milwaukee and declared the 2002 MLB All-Star Game a 7-7 tie because managers Joe Torre and Bob Brenly ran out of pitchers?

A year later, MLB announced its decision to add “meaning” to its mid-summer exhibition game, when all the commissioner needed to do was tell the managers to be smarter. Was it really that big a deal that the game ended in a tie? Of course not, it was a good game.
Still, it was a mistake.

But to award the National League home-field advantage in the World Series based on winning the All-Star Game? Big mistake. Baseball is a sport where home field offers a true advantage, because the home team bats last. Nine All-Star Games have been played since Selig’s decision and the team with home field has won six of those World Series titles, including the past two, which were won by underdog NL teams. Since 1985, the team with home-field advantage has won 21 of 26 World Series titles.

Doesn’t it make more sense to award that to the team that, you know, actually has the better record over 162 regular-season games? The run for the best record in baseball would actually create some interleague intrigue down the stretch.

You want to give the All-Star Game a little meaning, make it the first tie-breaker in the event that both the AL and NL World Series teams finished the season dead even.
Don’t go with a silly gimmick in the middle of July.

“I had two people, Henry Aaron and (the late) Ron Santo, who said you have to get meaning back in the game,” Selig explained Tuesday. “Is it perfect? There’s no perfect solution. But you take a game that’s clearly the best of the All-Star Games and give it some meaning. You watch these dugouts, the players all care.”

The players never stopped caring, at least when they were on the field. Did some leave the ballpark early, after they’d been removed? Sure. So tell them, “Stop doing that.”

But the reason baseball’s All-Star Game is the best is, simply, because baseball, unlike other sports, can be played with maximum effort — or something close to it — without fear of injury. As we saw Tuesday night, Justin Verlander and Aroldis Chapman can still throw 100 miles per hour. Jose Bautista can lay out to make a diving catch in right field. Ryan Braun and Pablo Sandoval can still stretch doubles into triples and Mike Trout can still steal second base with a head-first slide. Even though it’s only an exhibition, the game can be played like a real game.

Other sports cannot do that.

The NHL All-Star Game is hockey without hard checking, therefore it is boring. The NFL Pro Bowl, because it is football without bone-jarring hits, is virtually unwatchable. The NBA All-Star Game should be better — it ranks a distant second to baseball — because one would think NBA players could play a pretty honest game of hoops.

But for some reason, a long time ago, the players decided to play only token defense in their All-Star Game, which then turned that event into more of a celebrity gala than an athletic contest.

The Major League Baseball All-Star Game never stopped being good. Not even 10 years ago when it ended in a tie. Maybe it’s time the commissioner realize he overreacted.
“When I’m gone in two-and-a-half years,” Selig said. “They can do what they want.”